Israel - Galilee & Tel Aviv

Galilee:

In the Galilee region, we stayed at a Hosteling International youth hostel. They are actually very nice; generally, the only annoying thing about them are the noisy 'youths' that also stay there. We came back from sightseeing to find a group of co-ed high school kid at the hostel. Oh no, we groaned, are they going to be loud...wait, they can't be high school kids because some of the boys are carrying machine guns! We are used to seeing guns around on this trip - many banks and stores in Central & South America had guards with guns, and of course the military men have them, but here in Israel, we see them in unexpected places, like a young man in jeans walking hand in hand with his girlfriend, carrying a machine gun, or a guy ordering a Big Mac at McDonald's, with a gun on his back. Sorry, no pictures - we try not to annoy men with guns.

This is the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth (the childhood home of Jesus), where the Catholics believe the Angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would bear the son of God:

Shopping in Nazareth:

This is the rock where it is believed that Jesus laid the five loaves and two fishes that multiplied to feed 5000, in the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves & Fishes:

Tel Aviv:

We were sort of 'churched' out after Galilee, so we headed to Tel Aviv to enjoy the famous night life. Jerusalem was pretty dead on Friday night as Sabbath starts sundown Friday (the official weekend in Israel is Friday afternoon and Saturday, but some Muslim establishments close on Friday and some Christian establishments close on Sunday - very confusing), but we had heard that in Tel Aviv, people party on Friday night. We got all dressed up (as much as we could with our backpacker clothes) and went out about 8:30pm - it was very quiet! But things picked up at midnight, and by the time we went home around 2am, it was very busy. The cab driver told us that people have dinner with family Friday night and come out very late.